Joseph Arthur "Walk On The Wild Side"

A minor footnote to the announcement that David Letterman is retiring, was that Mike Mills of R.E.M. fame, broke the story.

He was part of the band for the scheduled musical guest that night, Joseph Arthur, so he was at the afternoon taping, and tweeted the news.

Joseph Arthur was on, because he has recently released a cover of "Walk On The Wild Side."  Arthur was a friend of Reed's, and recorded this reworking, as a tribute to his late friend.

See the Letterman performance below, which includes Mike Mills, and Peter Buck of R.E.M.


See the video on Youtube.

R.E.M. "Superman"

Last weekend, I was out for drinks with Craig Sherman, who likes to ask questions.

"If you could be anyone famous, who would you be?"

Strangely, the answer came to me quickly.

"Mike Mills of R.E.M."

Waay back in college, I had a next door neighbor from Georgia and a bunch of friends who were musicians.  So naturally, we learned a few R.E.M. songs.

Even though it was a cover, we thought "Superman" (a hidden track on the cassette!) would be a great addition to our repertoire.

Kristine had the best voice, so of course she would sing the Michael Stipe part.  And since I could barely do anything else to contribute (my bass playing skills were severely limited), I got to sing the Mike Mills part.

And here's what I discovered.

Despite the fact that Stipe get referred to as the "lead singer" and Mills as the "back-up singer," on "Superman" Mills sings just as much as Stipe does.

In fact, this is true on a ton of R.E.M. songs.  He never comes off as the "lead singer" (except for the couple of songs he gets to sing lead on, from "Out Of Time"), but he's not a background guy by any stretch.

I became more attuned his contributions to the band.

A casual R.E.M. fan might suspect that R.E.M.'s melodic sensibility came from either the lead singer with amazing pipes, or the guitar player (Peter Buck) who seemed to produce endless combinations to guitar (and later, mandolin) figures to build songs around.

But multi-instrumentalist Mills, was the main contributor of songs you know and love, like "Don't Go Back To Rockville," "Nightswimming" and "At My Most Beautiful."

So Craig Sherman asked the question, and as I flipped through names in my head, I stopped on Mike Mills.

As I told Craig, and the rest of of gang at the table:

"He's this awesome musician, in one of the biggest bands in the world, but he never had to live out front.  He's been super-successful, and never has to work again if he doesn't want to, so he's free to pursue whatever creative outlets he wants to.  He'll probably eventually make a solo record, but he'll be able to do so without the crushing expectations that will be heaped upon a Michael Stipe solo record."

I'm sure my therapist would have a few interesting thoughts about my reasons for picking him.



Hear the song on Youtube.

Indigo Girls with Michael Stipe “Kid Fears”

It was Spring 1990, and my college roommates and I had picked up tickets to The Worcester Centrum to see R.E.M. We were pretty dare excited, since a love of the band had played a large part in forging our friendship in the dorms of UMass Amherst.

So as not to miss a minute, we were sure to be on the scene very early and we caught the opening act, some band I’d never heard of.

It’s funny, 20 years later, to remember a time when I didn’t know who the Indigo Girls were. But at the time of this story, I was open ears, and ready to be impressed.

Not surprisingly, they won me over pretty quickly, but the most entertaining part of the night, was when, part-way through the start of a somewhat dark song, a figure emerged from the shadows to join the girls.

Michael Stipe’s soaring vocals joined a song I’d later learn was “Kid Fears.”

From the moment he opened his mouth, the crowd---who was there to see R.E.M., not this no-name opening band---went wild. Seeing Stipe an hour earlier than planned just sent them into spasms of fan-ecstacy.

Then another figure emerged from the shadows. An audible gasp rose from the crowd. Then waves of applause.

Mike Mills? Bill Berry? Peter Buck?

No, it turned out to be a roadie, carrying out an extra mic stand.

Sheepishly, he waved to the crowd, and with a big smile on his face, he faded back into the shadows.

The Baseball Project “Ted F---ing Williams”

I was watching a bit of the ALCS the other night . . . watching the Yankees pull away from the Angels, when that four letter word passed my lips. And it made me think of this song.

The Baseball Project practically constitutes a genre of its own---a band that writes song only about specific baseball players. Some of the musicians behind the project are probably familiar, including Peter Buck of R.E.M. and Scott McCaughey who plays in R.E.M.’s touring band and leads both The Young Fresh Fellows and The Minus Five.

Steve Wynn, the group leader, is a big baseball fan, and spearheaded the debut album, (which also spawned a follow-up EP), featuring songs about Fernando Valenzuela and the story of Chavez Ravine, Curt Flood and the rise of Free Agency and Mark McGuire’s testimony before Congress on steroid abuse in Major League Baseball.

But as a Red Sox devotee, I loved hearing their take on the oft-repeated legend that Ted Williams used to, while taking batting practice, yell out “I’M TED FUCKING WILLIAMS AND I’M THE GREATEST HITTER IN BASEBALL!!!”

Ted Williams was not the cuddly sort, and the song looks at baseball fandom from the perspective of someone who is perhaps the greatest, but not the most beloved. And he can’t understand why.

Hear a sample and buy the song:


Check out all the lyrics, and a little bit about each song on the album, then buy the album here.

See the band live, and on Letterman, here